Cryptome welcomes MI6 names The Sunday Times could not publish. Send
to jya@pipeline.com

The Sunday Times - Britain

December 28, 2003

Revealed: how MI6 sold the Iraq war

Nicholas Rufford

THE Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public support
for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The government yesterday
confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant
stories in the media about Saddam Husseins weapons of mass destruction.

The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the
run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the
circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons
expert.

A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched
in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddams development of
nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation.
There were things about Saddams regime and his weapons that the
public needed to know, said the official.

The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions
in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort.
He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6
staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material.

The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat
than it actually was, Ritter said last week.

He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics
up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. Stories ran in the media
about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes (to produce
weapons of mass destruction), said Ritter. They were sourced
to western intelligence and all of them were garbage.

Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague of
Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to the media.
Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the media,
said Ritter.

Huttons report is expected to deliver a verdict next month on whether
intelligence was misused in order to promote the case for going to war.

Hutton heard evidence that Kelly was authorised by the Foreign Office to
speak to journalists on Iraq. Kelly was in close touch with the Rockingham
cell, a group of weapons experts that received MI6 intelligence.

Blair justified his backing for sanctions and for the invasion of Iraq on
the grounds that intelligence reports showed Saddam was working to acquire
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The use of MI6 as a back
channel for promoting the governments policies on Iraq was never
discovered during the Hutton inquiry and is likely to cause considerable
disquiet among MPs.

A key figure in Operation Mass Appeal was Sir Derek Plumbly, then director
of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office and now Britains
ambassador to Egypt. Plumbly worked closely with MI6 to help to promote
Britains Middle East policy.

The campaign was judged to be having a successful effect on public opinion.
MI6 passed on intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction
and rebuilding its arsenal.

Poland, India and South Africa were initially chosen as targets for the campaign
because they were non-aligned UN countries not supporting the British and
US position on sanctions. At the time, in 1997, Poland was also a member
of the UN security council.

Ritter was a willing accomplice to the alleged propaganda effort when first
approached by MI6s station chief in New York. He obtained approval
to co-operate from Richard Butler, then executive chairman of the UN Special
Commission on Iraq Disarmament.

Ritter met MI6 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal at a lunch in London in June
1998 at which two men and a woman from MI6 were present. The Sunday Times
is prevented by the Official Secrets Act from publishing their names.

Ritter had previously met the MI6 officer at Vauxhall Cross, the services
London headquarters. He asked Ritter for information on Iraq that could be
planted in newspapers in India, Poland and South Africa from where it would
feed back to Britain and America.

Ritter opposed the Iraq war but this is the first time that he has named
members of British intelligence as being involved in a propaganda campaign.
He said he had decided to name names because he was frustrated
at an official cover-up and the misuse of intelligence.

What MI6 was determined to do by the selective use of intelligence
was to give the impression that Saddam still had WMDs or was making them
and thereby legitimise sanctions and military action against Iraq,
he said.

Recent reports suggest America has all but abandoned hopes of finding weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq and that David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group,
has resigned earlier than expected, frustrated that his resources have been
diverted to tracking down insurgents.